Our waste

Our focus is recycling and improving public recycling facilities within our streets and parks. We want to reduce waste to ensure Richmond upon Thames is greener, safer, and fairer for everyone. 

Find out how we will reduce waste within the borough:

• Our objective
• What we are doing to reduce waste

Our objective

We will embed reduce, reuse, recycle into everything Richmond does around waste. We will work with our residents, businesses and schools to reduce the overall amount of waste generated in the borough and will aim to be one of the top performing boroughs in London for recycling. We are committed to supporting residents to reduce the amount of single use plastic they consume and to promote the Circular Economy across the borough.

Our key target is to reduce the amount of waste generated in the borough.

Richmond collects about 293,000 containers of household waste per week (including bin bags and recycling boxes). The Waste Management Team have been able to decrease municipal waste from approximately 89,234 tonnes in 2015/16 to 88,785 tonnes in 2017/18.

In addition, Richmond collected 1332.65 tonnes per annum of plastic waste from collections in 2017/18.

What we are doing to reduce waste

Specific actions highlighted in the Climate Emergency Strategy that aim to reduce the amount of waste generated in the borough include:

• A new waste and recycling contract in 2020
• Improved household refuse and recycling collections, improved food waste collection and provision for food waste from flatted properties
• Enhancement to the existing garden waste collections
• Enhanced commercial waste collections, including recycling options and food waste
• Reuse and recycling opportunities for household bulky waste and electronic items
• We will discourage littering and fly-tipping by adopting a zero-tolerance approach to enforcement, ensuring that the Fixed Penalty Notice is a first warning for fly-tipping and exploring increasing fines for littering.
• We will publish a vision for how the borough can be single use plastic free
• We will seek funding to deliver new public drinking fountains across the borough
• We will work with schools to decrease the amount of waste they generate
• Support a new reusable nappy scheme